Dangerously Irrelevant

Short version

We’re relaunching our online School Technology Leadership courses and programs today! Woo hoo!

(This is all pending final approval by Faculty Senate)

Long version

It’s Digital Learning Day here in the U.S. As I said in my guest post for the event:

We … need school leaders who can begin envisioning the implications of these [new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected] environmental characteristics for learning, teaching, and schooling. We need administrators who can design and operationalize our learning environments to reflect these new affordances.

I also said:

If a principal or superintendent isn’t receiving [assistance] from the university that prepared her, her state and national leadership associations, her regional education service agency, her state department of education, the federal government, or a corporate or foundation initiative, where is she supposed to get the information and training that she needs to improve her technology leadership skills? From a book or a few web sites?

When we underinvest in the people that control all of the resources that instigate and facilitate change – money, time, training, personnel allocation, structural (re)alignment, organizational mission/vision, etc. – we shouldn’t be surprised when desired changes in our schools fail to materialize. We also shouldn’t be surprised when school administrators make technology-related decisions because of fear, lack of knowledge, or community or political pressure rather than educational appropriateness.

When an administrator’s mental light bulb turns on regarding technology, it’s not just an individual or classroom that’s affected, it’s his entire building or district. As such, it’s time for more attention to [the technology leadership needs of] our principals and superintendents.

Those of us who work in Educational Leadership preparation programs are a big part of the problem. We should be envisioning what it means to prepare P-12 students for the demands of tomorrow and then designing principals’ and superintendents’ preservice experiences so that they then can go out and start to make those things happen. Instead, at best we’re teaching traditional course content online or showing prospective administrators how to use a few tools. That’s if we’re doing anything at all regarding technology (and that’s a BIG if in many/most university programs). Our self-affirmations that we’re ‘integrating technology’ ring hollow.

Graduate certificate, Master’s, or Ph.D. in School Technology Leadership

It is within this context that I announce that we’re relaunching our online School Technology Leadership courses. When I was at the University of Minnesota, we received a federal grant to create the nation’s first graduate program designed to prepare technology-savvy school leaders. Our evaluator, the American Institutes for Research, verified that our program had positive, statistically-significant impacts on participants’ technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. We ran 4 national cohorts through that program before I left. Working with those educators was incredibly wonderful. I can’t express in words how delighted I am that our courses are now available again.

So if you would like a graduate certificate, Master’s degree, or Ph.D. with a focus in School Technology Leadership, this is your chance to go deep in all five of ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). All courses and programs are online and cohort-based; the Ph.D. program requires a few additional summer visits. All tuition is at the in-state rate. See the links below for more information. (This is all pending final approval from Faculty Senate)

I hope that many of you will apply or will encourage those leaders around you to boost their own technology leadership skills. We’re aiming to start at least one American and one international cohort this Fall but can handle much more if the demand is there. And if we’re not exactly what you’re looking for, check out options from ISTE and Johns Hopkins University, Kennesaw State University, Leading Edge Certification, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Intel, and others. There are 200,000+ school administrators in the U.S. alone. Most of them need a lot of help when it comes to technology, so find a program that best fits their needs and get ‘em started!

Additional info about our STL programs

• Flyer
• Overview
• Graduate certificate
• Master’s (or Ed.S.)
• Ph.D. [for which we expect a VERY competitive admissions process]
• Admissions requirements and application info [Fall deadline is May 15]
• Questions? Contact Dr. Justin Bathon, CASTLE Co-Director

Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies – it happens when society adopts new behaviors.
– Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160

I visit many schools that have ‘new technologies,’ but not enough of them also have ‘new behaviors.’ It’s time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I’m pointing to you first).

Beginning in the 2010-2011 school year, our school went through a number of transformations and changes, all aimed at enhancing the quality of the learning and teaching within our building. We adapted a 5 x 3 trimester schedule providing longer class periods and a lower student-to-teacher ratio. We added a house system separating the student body into six different houses mixed by age. Through a partnership with Apple, we implemented a 1:1 laptop program with our students receiving MacBooks. Below are five lessons we learned and the two biggest struggles we continue to face.

Lessons learned

1. It’s the pedagogy not the technology. Technology should always be at the service of pedagogy. If you’ve heard Gary Stager speak or read his posts, I’m sure you’ve heard this theme before. When technology integration moves from what Alan November calls automative to informative, the real fun begins. Technology integration in schools should not be about tacking technology onto poor pedagogy. Rather, the real joy and power of integrating technology into the classroom is the power it has to redefine the relationships in the classroom and reorient them toward a more student-centered approach to learning. In our efforts, pushing for a longer class period also allowed our staff to move away from lecture-driven instructional models and to start implementing strategies that are more constructivist in their nature. Project-based learning, challenge problems, and creative and collaborative work are all enhanced and enabled by high quality technology integration. Using a Google Doc and the Web to do a 20-minute kick-start with teams of students finding, validating, and creating information on a topic within the curriculum is a very engaging way to begin a new unit. Using various tech tools to easily integrate peer instruction strategies based on the work of Dr. Eric Mazur is a great way to leverage the technology. But in all of these examples, it is really the orientation to and relationship with the learning that has changed.
2. Support the pedagogy at all costs. Teachers will and can change their methods when they are comfortable with their knowledge and inspired by what they see from those around them. Any new teacher quickly begins to teach like her peer group. To support this shift in pedagogy, we spent the entire year before the 1:1 program began creating a full period a day for staff to attend PD sessions throughout the year. We created a new position, Director of Instructional Technology, to lead a good number of these sessions with the goal of staff literacy in a number of pedagogical tools before the 1:1 initiative started. As the work is ongoing, we now offer PD sessions after school on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings, giving our staff an array of choices, with a certain minimum number that need to be attended. We compensate them at $27 an hour through our Title II funds. A list of this year’s sessions is here. This model has created small groups of teachers who attend sessions that they are personally interested in and who want to integrate these strategies into their classrooms.
3. The plumbing and the plumbers. For staff to choose these strategies, they have to be guaranteed the network and bandwidth will be supportive. To that end, we added to our technology staff, doubling its size from one to two. Additionally we upgraded in a significant way the technology infrastructure by adding numerous access points and made sure our bandwidth pipe could handle 800 students pulling on it at once. I believe these changes are essential and that without them our program would be in peril. Access to the Web has to work and work quickly if these strategies will be relied upon. Additionally, every student and staff member was given a gmail account hosted through the school. In a year and half of running, our network has been down for approximately one hour. It just so happened that one hour coincided perfectly with the superintendent’s annual visit and the need to log mid-term grades. Funny how those things work out.
4. Student ownership. We had the choice early on to either externalize ownership to the students or keep the ownership of the machines on the books of the school. In our case – and after much study – we decided to externalize the cost and have families purchase their laptops through the school. We provide financing options to our families. As a private school we have this opportunity. I realize that in many public schools the machines must be school-owned. In visiting with other schools who have school-owned 1:1 programs, the breakage rates seem to be higher. In general our breakage rates have come in below expected numbers for the students. Yet, interestingly, the staff break their machines at a rate four times that of students. If our students want to put stickers and other stuff all over the machine, they can have at it.
5. Principal leadership. If it isn’t important to the leadership, it won’t get done. I’m not the world’s greatest principal by any means – and I make a whole host of mistakes every single day – but if I do anything well it might be modeling technology use. I teach a class every year in the high school and lead a good number of the professional development sessions related to technology-rich teaching strategies. I believe that by spending my time modeling what I believe is important, it allows the staff to get on board. I won’t ask you to do something I won’t do or won’t be willing to learn to do. Of course I pay for the time spent teaching by having to log more early mornings or late nights in the office, but I think the relationships built with students and staff more than make up for it.

Biggest Struggles

1. Classroom management. Our staff has learned rather quickly that if they want to continue to use lecturing as their dominant instructional strategy, equipping the audience with a laptop is not conducive to that end. The computer should be more than a $1,000 pencil for note-taking. Direct instruction in its proper place and within limited time frames can be an effective strategy. When everyone has a machine, how do you guarantee that they are all on task? To this end, our staff has learned about where to be physically while they lecture and how to set up the classroom. Some staff use the LAN monitoring program. In some sense, though, student engagement in a lecture-driven classroom has always been an issue. Note passing and eye rolling have always been there. Switching from passing a note to chatting on Skype is the same problem in different clothes. Good teachers have engaged students.
2. Assisting parents. Our students take their laptops home at the end of the school day and for holidays and the summer. At school we use the Barracuda system to filter the Web and their access and to block the traditional things that a school would block. When our students take the machines home, we presume competence on the part of our parents that they already are dealing with their own rules and Web access issues. For the most part this proves to be true, but I do think we need to do a better job of supporting some of our families that struggle in this area. One fear that some of our staff and families had is that our students would spend all of their time staring at the screen in front of them. This may be true the first week they pick up their machine over the summer, but over the last two years a few interesting things have happened. Discipline referrals have fallen by 50%, absenteeism is down by 30%, participation in school events like Homecoming and the canned food drive has more than doubled, and the number of student-initiated clubs and activities has grown by around 30%. And enrollment looks to be growing for the third year in a row. We interpret these changes to mean that technology is helping our school to form an environment that is truly conducive to student learning in a number of areas.   From what we see school is becoming more relevant and a place where our students want to be.

In conclusion, our journey is an ongoing one. Simply buying the machines and upgrading the network is not enough to be a 1:1 laptop school. The true work is in shifting the pedagogy to be more student-centered. As Gary Stager says, less “us” and more “them.” The rewards to this point have been worth the risks.

Charlie Roy is the principal of Peoria Notre Dame High School, an 800-student coeducational Diocesian Catholic school in Peoria, Illinois. He also is an adjunct instructor for Aurora University, teaching courses in school leadership and instructional technology. In his former career, Charlie was an options trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Follow Charlie on Twitter at @caroy.

As soon as you say ‘failure is not an option,’ you’ve just said ‘innovation is not an option.’
– Seth Godin, The Flip Side

Download this file: png pptx

See also my other slides and the Great Quotes About Learning and Change Flickr pool.

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) has created a new Digital Principal Award to ‘honor principals who exhibit bold, creative leadership in their drive to harness the potential of new technologies to further learning goals.’ NASSP also will use the award process to ‘showcase models of leadership that encourage the use of technology in instruction and for principals’ own professional use.’

Every year, eSchoolNews recognizes 10 technology-savvy superintendents. Now NASSP is recognizing some technology-savvy principals. If you know of a digital principal, nominate him or her by January 17!

As was so aptly said just a few days ago:

It is hard to make an argument that there are many desirable post-secondary educational or career scenarios for current high school students that will not require the use of computer technology on a daily basis. The kids have known this for quite some time now. High school students know that they will almost certainly be using computers in any desirable job that they manage to get after high school. They know that a computer is a requirement for success in today’s higher eduction environments. They know that, in the “real world,” college students don’t write papers in longhand on loose-leaf notebook paper; they know that, in the “real world,” people don’t create business presentations with markers and paste on poster board or tri-fold displays; they know that, “in the real world,” people who engage in any type of research may still occasionally use books, but they conduct the majority of their research using online tools. They know that, “in the real world,” bankers do not keep their accounts in paper ledger books, or do their financial forecasting only with the aid of a calculator. Yet high school students are regularly asked to write in longhand on notebook paper, make presentations using kindergarten tools, research mostly using books, and do their calculations on paper. Why should anyone be surprised that they don’t find their high school experiences “relevant?”

Do we have the will to integrate digital technologies into students’ learning in regular, frequent, and meaningful ways? Are we brave enough to cast a critical eye at the learning tasks that we assign students and ask difficult but necessary questions about their relevance in a technology-suffused, globally-interconnected society? Are we willing to look at what passes for ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ and ‘schooling’ on a day-to-day basis in this country and acknowledge that the vast majority of it is mind-numbingly boring and disengaging? Can we recognize that we’re infantilizing our young adults instead of enabling them to be empowered learners, thinkers, and doers?

Robert Fried noted that:

We have opted not to create schools as places where children’s curiosity, sensory awareness, power, and communication can flourish, but rather to erect temples of knowledge where we sit them down, tell them a lot of stuff we think is important, try to control their restless curiosity, and test them to see how well they’ve listened to us. (pp. 58-59)

He also stated that:

[M]ost of what [our students] experience during school hours passes over them like the shadow of a cloud, or through them like an undigested seed. They may be present in the classroom, but they are not really there. Their pencils may be chugging away on the worksheets or the writing prompts or math problems laid out for them, but their intelligence is running on two cylinders at best. They pay some attention to what their teacher happens to be telling them, but their imagination has moved elsewhere. (p. 1)

We could have learning spaces that emphasize hands-on inquiry, critical thinking, collaboration, and authentic, “real world” problem solving instead of teacher lecture, rote practice, and fact regurgitation. We could have learning spaces that spark students’ imaginations and enable them to be interested, engaged learners instead of dulling them into bored compliance. We could have learning spaces that students would choose rather than classrooms that we force students to attend. Shame on us that we don’t.

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

Steve Hargadon and I are chatting tonight about school leadership in the 21st century. I hope that you’ll join us, share your thoughts, and ask some really tough questions.

If you’re not subscribed to Steve’s Future of Education webinar series, you should be!

Alberta, Canada is widely recognized as having one of the best schooling systems in the world. A recent article in Alberta Views highlighted the differences between its system and America’s, noting that the United States is an ‘anti-model’ for how to do school reform:

By contrast we can also learn what not to do from reform in the US, whose education system is in decline. Its elements, implemented over the past two decades, are largely ideological: “market-based” reforms (the application of “business insights” to the running of schools); an emphasis on standardization and narrowing of curriculum; extensive use of external standardized assessment; fostering choice and competition among schools, often with school vouchers; making judgements based on test data and closing “failing schools”; encouraging the growth of charter schools (which don’t have teacher unions); “merit pay” and other incentives; faith that “technologically mediated instruction” will reduce costs; an overwhelming “top-down” approach which tells everyone what to do and holds them accountable for doing it.

This state of affairs is both depressing and harmful, particularly since it’s pretty clear what we should be doing instead. As a recent book, Surpassing Shanghai, notes, school systems around the world (like Japan, Finland, Singapore, and Shanghai) that consistently outperform the U.S. on international assessments do things very differently:

1. Funding schools equitably, with additional resources for those serving needy students
2. Paying teachers competitively and comparably
3. Investing in high-quality preparation, mentoring and professional development for teachers and leaders, completely at government expense
4. Providing time in the school schedule for collaborative planning and ongoing professional learning to continually improve instruction
5. Organizing a curriculum around problem-solving and critical thinking skill
6. Testing students rarely but carefully — with measures that require analysis, communication, and defense of ideas

Schools in the U.S. are failing miserably to prepare most students for a complex, technology-suffused world and a hyperconnected, hypercompetitive global economy. What will it take for Americans to stand up and fight not just against our schooling systems but also against educational reform efforts that take those systems in wrong directions?

Hat tip: Joe Bower (for both the quote and the post title)

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

All the talk of technology integration into the curriculum, blended learning environments, and the explosion of online learning has me thinking: How are universities preparing leaders for an increasingly technological world?

On July 4, 2007 on this very site, Scott wrote, “School districts, state departments, the federal government, corporations, and foundations have spent a lot of time, money, and energy on the technology needs of students and teachers. We have seen very little concurrent activity on the behalf of administrators, despite the fact that if the leaders don’t get it, it isn’t going to happen.“

The die was cast at least three and a half years ago (truthfully… long before that).  Surely Ed. Leadership programs nationwide have been preparing digital age leaders to carry the torch back to their school/district and empower their staff to integrate technology. If not, why? Certainly, finance, law, organizational theory, and human resource courses are the foundation of programs across the country.  Isn’t technology as relevant in 2011 as these courses?

Leaders have limited time and increasingly limited resources. Pre-service and practicing leaders should be learning to use technology to create solutions to problems such lack of time, lack of communication, and the sense of isolation that they feel as they try to address the needs of teachers, parents, district staff, and students.

• Are leaders using mobile devices to get into classes and address e-mail on the go or are they still tucked away in their office sifting through hundreds of e-mails?
• Are leaders cheaply, quickly, and easily using the school website to inform and promote the school or is it outdated, cluttered, and otherwise useless?
• Have leaders begun building Professional Learning Networks to stay informed about effective strategies and of the changing face of education or are they isolated in their schools speaking with a few other administrators about what they read in the paper and in few professional journals?
• Are administrators conducting walkthroughs using mobile devices such as iPods/iPads and using surveys built for free on Google docs or are they paying for software (or, worse yet, still using paper and pencil)?
• Are backpacks still being loaded up with letters for parents (fundraisers, PTO reminders, monthly newsletters, etc.) or are leaders using software to create school calendars that parents and staff can sync to their own personal calendars?  Are school messages going out on Facebook and Twitter (I’ve heard those sites have a few members).

These questions just scratch the surface of the training we should be providing. Universities have been known to support, lead, innovate, and get students to think critically. In order to continue to fulfill these responsibilities for school leaders, covering technology in one class isn’t sufficient. So I revisit my original question: How are universities preparing leaders for an increasingly technological world in 2011? Which programs are the most successful at meeting this challenge? Who “came out swinging” as we were called to do so long ago?

Jason LaFrance is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Georgia Southern University. Previously he served as an Assistant Principal at an Apple Distinguished School and Positive Behavior Support Model School in Florida. His research focuses on technological innovation in leadership preparation and practice. He can be reached at www.jasonlafrance.com.

Over the past month I’ve been reading and thinking about the new Education Blueprint proposed by the Iowa Governor and the Iowa Department of Education (DE) as well as various reactions to that document. If you haven’t yet read Trace Pickering’s insightful (and also lengthy) response to the Blueprint, be sure to do so. Another important read is school change guru Michael Fullan’s recent paper, Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform.

Here are some additional thoughts of my own. These are not all-encompassing – I have additional questions and concerns – but they do constitute a few important issues that caught my attention. I’m also intentionally not commenting on topics for which I’m fairly ambivalent (e.g., charter schools) or don’t know enough (e.g., teacher salary schedules and compensation tiers) and instead will leave those to others who care or know more than I do.

Failing 3rd graders fails our 3rd graders

I’ll pick the low-hanging fruit first. Failing 3rd graders who can’t pass some reading assessment is a really, really bad idea. It doesn’t matter how many safeguards and second chances there are and I understand why the policy is being proposed (both educationally and politically). The bottom line is that, regardless of the ‘social promotion’ rhetoric and whatever gut intuition parents or policymakers may have, the research evidence is overwhelmingly unidirectional that in-grade retention does far more harm than good. Desired test score increases often never materialize and, even if they do, they usually don’t persist past a few years. One of the stronger and consistent findings in educational research is that, in the long run, in-grade retention is at best a long-term wash score-wise and the resultant negative impact on students’ psyches and their likelihood to graduate is horrific. The Governor and DE don’t get to advocate for research-driven practices in other parts of the Blueprint but ignore that requirement here.

Input-Process-Output

We can visualize a box that represents the day-to-day occurrences within a classroom or other learning environment. That box is the most important aspect of schooling: if what students and teachers do on a daily basis in their learning-teaching interactions doesn’t change substantially, all hope of achieving ‘world class schools’ in Iowa vanishes. WE LEARN WHAT WE DO. There are a variety of inputs (e.g., standards, curricula, teacher quality, funding and resources, school structures, technology infrastructure, laws and policies) that hopefully impact what occurs inside the box. We also look at what comes out of the box (e.g., student knowledge, skills, and dispositions) to see if what we wanted to happen actually did happen. This is a classic Input-Process-Output systems model (that hopefully is accompanied by a recursive feedback loop that informs the system).

There are 85 main bullet points, or action ideas, in the Blueprint. As you can see in my annotated version of the Blueprint, I tried to place each action idea into one of three categories: Input, Process, or Output (coded I, P, & O in the document). You are welcome to disagree with my categorizations (and I admit I struggled with some of them), but the evidence is quite stark that the Blueprint is overwhelmingly focused on inputs and outputs and gives very little attention to the day-to-day learning and teaching processes that occur between students and teachers.

This is unsurprising. This is traditional school reform stuff:

We’ll change some inputs; let’s try better teachers and higher standards. Oh, and we’ll also change some structures around. How about reallocating some monies, reorganizing traditional schools a bit, and allowing for charter and online schools? On the back end, we’ll assess like crazy by changing our tests or using new and/or additional ones.

In the end, we change only a little and, if we’re lucky, we see a little change in results. This is the way most states do it, but it’s neither the only way nor the required way. Where in the Blueprint is the recognition that we need to do something DIFFERENT in our classrooms? Where’s the acknowledgment, for example, that we need to invest heavily in teachers’ ability to facilitate learning environments that foster higher-order thinking skills (an increasing necessity these days)? Where’s extensive language about better facilitating student engagement in their courses? There’s virtually nothing about students’ interest in what they’re supposedly learning. There’s nary a bullet point about student hands-on or applied or problem-based learning or authentic intellectual work (a great program already being piloted by DE, by the way). To the extent that PBL and AIW and similar issues are addressed at all, the Blueprint does so indirectly; all hopes lie with effective implementation of the Iowa/Common Core and the Smarter Balanced assessments. Instead of just holding educators ‘accountable’ on the front and back ends of the process, how about directly investing in them so that they actually can be successful? The overwhelming emphasis of the Blueprint is on accountability rather than capacity-building. Go ahead and do a search in the Blueprint for the terms training or professional development or capacity; you won’t find anything. If DE and the Governor are truly serious about ‘world class schooling’ in Iowa, they should be focusing heavily on the Process box – the day-to-day learning and teaching processes occurring in classrooms all across the state – and right now they’re not.

Low-level testing

Much of the Governor’s education concerns appear to be driven by NAEP scores and proficiency levels, despite the fact that most of the items are predominantly factual recall and low-level procedural knowledge AND despite the fact that the designers of NAEP freely admit that the level designations are arbitrary AND despite the fact that the American Institutes of Research notes that most of the nations to which we are comparing Iowa also wouldn’t score well on NAEP. If we want our students to be gaining higher- rather than lower-order thinking skills, end-of-course assessments appear to offer us nothing better. So there’s a lot of new and/or additional testing in the Blueprint that’s focused on stuff you can easily find using Google – or that can be done cheaper by people elsewhere in the world – instead of on the skills and capacities necessary to really foster a world-class citizenry and workforce. We’re not talking about assessments like the College and Work Readiness Assessment or what they do in Singapore. Again, when it comes to higher-order thinking skills, there’s virtually no proposed investment in the Blueprint for the instructional side and all of our hopes rest on the Smarter Balanced assessments, for which right now we have no idea what they will look like and no idea how they will operate. The Blueprint essentially validates and tweaks and expands current testing schemes, despite significant warnings to the contrary from our very own National Research Council.

Digital, global world. Analog, local schools.

It’s a globally-connected world out there, but the Blueprint primarily focuses on globalization as an economic force to which we must respond, not a societal / learning / citizenship issue to which we should attend for mutual benefit and empowerment. The Blueprint also says that Iowa students and graduates need to be internationally competitive but most of what it proposes is vastly different from what other countries are doing to achieve better results. The Blueprint contains no significant investment in teacher capacity-building, no emphasis on early childhood education, no amelioration of the impacts of family and neighborhood poverty on learning, and no recognition of the importance of strategic foreign language learning (particularly at younger ages), just to name a few.

It’s also a digital world out there, but you wouldn’t know it given the lack of emphasis placed on technology in the Blueprint. For example, only nominal attention is paid to online learning, despite the fact that it’s booming nationwide and despite Iowa’s meager offerings compared to other states. Even though Iowa ranks abysmally low when it comes to Internet speed and access, there’s nothing regarding the importance of universal statewide broadband Internet access for both educational and economic development purposes. Most damning, there’s absolutely no recognition of the power and potential of digital technologies to transform learning, teaching, and schooling, despite the rapid and radical reshaping of every other information-oriented societal sector by digital tools and the Web. In the world of the Blueprint, it’s as if computers and the Internet essentially didn’t exist. Go ahead and do a search in the Blueprint for the terms Internet or digital or technology; the omissions are quite alarming, actually. There’s one meager shout-out to the rapid growth in 1:1 laptop initiatives across the state, but no support for giving every Iowa child a powerful digital learning device, for providing technology integration assistance for educators, for upgrading woeful infrastructures, for rethinking policies, or for anything else of substance when it comes to educational technology. It’s 2011. Personal computers have been around for three decades and the Internet has been around for at least a dozen years for most of us. Digital technologies are transforming how Iowans and the world connect, collaborate, and LEARN; this omission is both sad and shameful.

A lost opportunity

There are a few things that I’m glad the Blueprint included. Although there is only a single bullet point referencing competency-based (rather than age-based) student progression, if done well that one thing alone has the potential to significantly and positively reshape much of how we do education in Iowa. I also like the willingness to invest in district-level innovation and to give districts some flexibility. The proof of most of this, like everything else, will depend on the legislative language and the resources committed.

As I think about the Blueprint as a whole (and we are encouraged by the document to treat it as ‘a set of changes designed to work together’), it feels like a lost opportunity. The Governor and DE had the chance to dream big and swing for the fences. They had the chance to propose impactful, sweeping changes to the current system. They had the chance to create learning and teaching environments that prepare students for the next 50 years rather than the last 50 and to educate the public as to why those changes are necessary. The Blueprint rhetoric is right but the action items fall far short. I don’t know if it’s a lack of knowledge or vision or courage that’s holding them back, and of course there are political considerations with all of this. But the result is a a tweak of the current system, a tinkering at the edges rather than a rethinking of the core. Perhaps it’s foolish of me to wish for more.

I welcome all feedback. Thanks.